I'm developing a Chrome extension partially similar to another already approved by Facebook: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/invite-post-likers-to-lik/dfhnkeijhilolcebpchcdiclpejojodb?hl=en
My extension allows to invite people, that reacted to a publication, to like the page of that publication. So people who liked a post, receive an invite saying something like "You liked this post, do you wanna receive updates from this page".
I noticed that by using the extension, sometimes I would get a message stating that "You’re Temporarily Blocked. It looks like you were misusing this feature by going too fast. You’ve been blocked from using it." To avoid that I added a pause between each click of 1 second. Also, I added a pause between loading new reactions of 2.5 seconds. Even so, on rare occasions I still get blocked.
I looked for headers about usage limit, similar to the ones for the Graph API (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/overview/rate-limiting/) but it seems that they are not sent in responses to the FB site itself.
I imagine, in the future, Facebook will either block these invites at all, or let people just invite everyone. As it sits is just a "difficult" feature.
For the time being are there any guidelines I can follow?
Thanks,
Related
We have an application that lets users challenge their friends in various challenges. Right now we issue the challenge by posting a message to their friends wall. This functionality will be removed in february so we need to find another way of issuing the challenge. What are the alternatives available?
We want the friend to get notified that the challenge has taken place and that some kind of story is generated on some wall.
We have looked at open graph actions and the mention tagging there must be done by the user herself so we can't use that to mention the selected friend. And we cant use action tagging since this is not an event that has or is happening.
It might be possible to use an open graph action referencing the built in "Profile (External)" object, but that seems to be rather messy - we just want to reference the facebook user. And we don't know if the friend would get notified of this - probably not.
The story could be published to the users own wall, but we really want the friend to be mentioned and notified.
It seems to be a rather standard use case for applications - does facebook provide this functionality anymore?
Edit: I'm thinking that maybe invoking the javascript feed dialog with a from and to setting might work. Then the user can also write a personal message for the challenge, and it should show up at both walls?
The best way to do this is by using a request: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/requests/
Of course it will not be public then, but after all it´s a direct action between the user and his friend and other users might see this as spam.
The other way (and the second best, i guess) is to use mention tagging:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/technical-guides/opengraph/mention-tagging/
You could use Open Graph to post a dynamic link, if the mentioned user clicks on it > challenge accepted. If any other user clicks on it, he will just get redirected to the main app page.
...another idea, which is probably the very best:
use the request dialog for the challenge
after sending the request, let the user (if he wants to) post a message about it on his wall (feed dialog)
I've found what could be a glaring problem with Facebook, or it could be a misunderstanding on my part (hope it's the latter). I have an app that uses the graph API to post links to friends walls (friends of the user, that is). The problem is that if the friend comments on the post, the user is never notified of it. i.e. Facebook doesn't create a notification for my user that his friend has commented on his post. That's a significant issue if you're trying to build an app that focuses on link sharing! Important: I've checked my notification settings several times, and I have the most liberal settings but still do not get any notifications.
It must be that Facebook treats posts by apps differently. My questions are:
1) Has anyone experienced a similar issue, or is there some way to get these notifications of comments to work?
2) If this is an inherent limitation, is there a way that my app can pick up on comments in response to posts made by my app? I can probably save the post id and regularly check back for comments...but that sucks. A better way would be to subscribe to changes in the post, although it doesn't look like Facebook's real-time updates support this. Maybe I'm answering my own question.
Facebook has acknowledged that this is a bug. The bug report and response by Facebook can be found here. Facebook has assigned it as a Medium priority issue...
I am developer of www.iloveskola.lv and I have created facebook login with API.
After user logs in with his facebook account he has opportunity to participate in voting game.
One question, 4 answers.
Each answer is facebook LIKE button.
When user press like button, LIKE content on facebook has been created automatically.
First 2-3 days its was working perfect, but now when user press button iframe content just blinks and nothing.
I checked this with mozilla(bug zilla) and saw following response:
for (;;);{"__ar":1,"payload":{"success":false,"show_error":true,"error_info":{"brief":"Invalid url","full":"URL could not be liked because it's been blocked.","errorUri":"\/connect\/connect_to_node_error.php?title=Invalid+url&body=URL+could+not+be+liked+because+it\u002527s+been+blocked.&hash=AQAh-oNvuhmlqYzH"}}}
For deep investigation you can try this system by yourself.
If our site is blocked want to hear explanation why this is happening.
If you were using Like buttons as a voting mechanism in a promotion (which is expressly against Facebook policy) it's quite likely users were marking the resulting stories as spam, removing the Like shortly afterwards, hiding it from their news feed, etc.
When you try to share a link and it fails, there's a link in the error message for contacting Facebook if you believe the block is incorrect.
Your site has been blocked, most likely because they deemed to be spam or breaking their terms of service regarding your contest rules. Contact their developer group to find out how to get it unblocked.
We have created an invite function at our site in JavaScript using the Graph API where users can invite their Facebook friends to our site. The users invited then get an invite post at their wall on Facebook.
This has been workling fine until suddenly one day the messages did not show up on the invited users wall. We even still get post sucess messages from Facebook and a Post ID.
Also, we nocticed that old invite posts were removed as well from the Faceook walls. However, other functions with the same app ID still work.
When we created a new Facebook app with a new Facebook app ID the invite functions work like normal again.
As far as we know we arent breaching any rules or regulations, and we havent been notified by Facebook (although we are quite active with FB ads).
Is there some risk Facebook have blocked our app without telling us? Can they block our domain if we continue? Are there any general rules when it comes to invite? Any tips?
Facebook has many anti-spam policies and procedures in place. If a high enough percentage of users delete the post that gets added to their wall or mark it as spam or choose to hide all posts from your application, the application will get removed and the posts removed as you have experienced. They may or may not email you to warn you.
Facebook has a high level guide to follow:
Create a great user experience
Build social and engaging applications
Give users choice and control
Help users share expressive and relevant content
Be trustworthy
Respect privacy
Don't mislead, confuse, defraud, or
surprise users
Don't spam - encourage authentic
communications
I am guessing they are flagging your account for not helping users share expressive and relevant content (I am guessing they don't get to type the message that gets shared on friends wall), as well as obviously for spam.
If you want to invite users, I would suggest using the supported method for this, the Facebook requests dialog, and move away from posting (spamming) other friends walls, as they most likely can ban your whole website or account if you keep doing what you are doing.
I'm considering developing an app that asks users to invite friends to participate at first launch, using the Request dialog. (The Request dialog would have a prominent Skip button, in agreement with Facebook policy IV.4.)
Browsing this forum, it appears that there USED to be a "Developer Policy V.4" which, at one time, said this: "You must not prompt users to send invitations, requests, generate notifications, or use other Facebook communication channels immediately after a user allows access or returns to your application."
I no longer see language like that in the policies available here: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/
Does this mean that prompting users to send invitations at first launch is now allowed? Or am I simply overlooking some language in the new policies that forbids this?
I believe this was removed intentionally, as it clearly isn't in their updated developer policies. The only mention of that old policy I can find is here. That post also gives a good reasoning for the old policy:
When a user -- whether returning or
new -- visits your application, you
must allow the user to engage with
your application before asking him/her
to publish a stream story, send out
Requests, or use any other
communication channel. The intention
behind this policy is to give users
the opportunity to meaningfully
interact with an application before
being faced with the decision of
whether to communicate with friends.
The advice is still valid even if the policy is no longer in place - that you should give the user a chance to use and learn about your application before being prompted to share it. However, if you are building a game like Words With Friends where you need to play against one of your Facebook friends, then I think it would be fine (almost necessary) to invite friends right away, and this may be why Facebook removed this from their policy.
I think you will be fine if you prompt a user to send friend invites immediately, provided its not for the purpose of spamming other people to get them to use your app and that you provide a skip option.
Also, its sad that its near impossible to get a response from Facebook like you have seen with their forums.